


Opportunity (is an Open Window)

by afterandalasia



Series: Jelsa Week 2014 [1]
Category: Frozen (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Acceptance, Arendelle, Crossover Pairings, Elsa Has Ice Powers, F/M, First Meetings, Friendship, Ice Magic, Jack Frost Has Ice Powers, Jelsa Week 2014, Post-Frozen (2013), Post-Rise of the Guardians, Pre-Relationship, Seasonal Spirits and Guardians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 17:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2701100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was probably, somewhere in the world, a proper and correct way to respond to waking up to find a strange young man perched on your windowsill.</p>
<p>It was almost certainly not to send a fistful of ice hurtling in his direction.</p>
<p>Luckily, their friendship got better.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For Jelsa Week 2014, Day One, "First".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opportunity (is an Open Window)

**Author's Note:**

> For [Jelsa Week 2014](http://frozenblume.tumblr.com/post/102301132507/jelsa-week-hello-snowflakes-it-is-my-pleasure) on tumblr, This is actually the first part of a much larger Elsa/Jack story upon which I have been working, but because it is not clear whether it will ever be finished in its entirety I will be breaking out seven sections which I hope will stand alone as stories. I hope this does not count too much as cheating.
> 
> To line up the storylines, I have pushed back Rise of the Guardians to about 1827 - happening around the same time as the earliest part of the movie, when Elsa is about 8. Other than that, it should not have changed too much.

There was probably, somewhere in the world, a proper and correct way to respond to waking up to find a strange young man perched on your windowsill.

It was almost certainly _not_ to send a fistful of ice hurtling in his direction. The young man gave a shocked yelp and disappeared backwards out of the window; Elsa, heart pounding, climbed out of bed and hurried over, ice crawling across her nightgown to form it into one of her dresses. Frost sparkled on her fingertips, and her tongue was ready to scream for the guards. Her window looked over the courtyard some thirty feet below, and the rooves were always slick with ice. He could not possibly...

One hand grasped the window-frame, and then the man pulled himself up, looking at her with complete astonishment. As if _she_ were somehow the unexpected one here.

“Can you _see_ me?”

His incredulity extended to his voice. He slung one leg over so that he was sitting astride the sill, holding a plain wooden staff in one hand, and looked at Elsa more keenly than she thought she had ever experienced. She felt an odd urge to cross her arms over her body, but instead kept her head high.

“What are you do- no,” she cut herself off, and turned back towards her door. “I am summoning the guards.”

“I wouldn’t do that, you know.” His reply made her stop, not three paces further away from him. “They might worry a bit when they find you talking to an empty window.”

“What?” She probably should not have turned, giving him a narrow-eyed and dangerous look. But the wind outside was starting to grow cold and blustery with her annoyance, and the confidence he wore like his cloak was annoying her all the more.

He rested his temple against the side of his staff. “Most people can’t see me.” There was something different in his voice as he spoke, almost wistful, and the way in which he was looking at Elsa was... not what she might have at first thought. It was not lascivious, not lingering on her body, and nor was it aggressive or as if he was here for some sort of attack. His eyes stayed on her face, curious but not frightened. That was something, even nowadays. “I didn’t realise that you would.”

“So you thought you would break into my room whilst invisible?” Elsa raised her eyebrows and treated him to the most haughty look that she could summon, drawing herself upright and letting her arms fall to her side. “Who are you, anyway?”

A smile quirked his lips, and made him look younger for a moment. “My name’s Jack Frost.”

Elsa almost laughed, holding the sound back into a sort of cough. “You think that I will believe that?”

Still without losing his smile, the young man raised his hand and turned it palm-up. A bead of ice appeared there, then grew and twisted into a swirl of glittering blue-white. Elsa took a breath that seemed to catch in her throat as he held it out towards her, like a fragment of fire turned to ice in a moment.

“I think you believe in something, if you can see me,” Jack said. “I’m not one of the big ones. Santa or Bunny... you don’t get him up here so much, he doesn’t like the cold. Ole Lukøje likes it here, though. Says that the air is fresher.”

No. This was ridiculous, even in a land where impossible seemed to be a relative term. Elsa shook her head. “Whoever you are, get out, or I will call the guards.”

There was not even time for Jack to reply before there was a knock at the door. Elsa stiffened, then tilted her head towards the door without taking her eyes away from the figure in the window. “Come in,” she called.

She rather expected him to rise to the bluff, to jump out of the window or into the room or do... something. But instead he watched her with the same mild smile as the door opened behind them.

“Is everything all right, Your Majesty?”

Gerda, one of the maids. Elsa turned towards her, keeping Jack in her peripheral vision, and gave a regal smile. “Yes, Gerda, of course it is.”

Gerda looked faintly concerned, but her eyes were on Elsa alone. She did not even glance towards the open window, let alone the young man seated there. And for all of the strangeness that Arendelle saw, a stranger in the Queen’s bedchamber would not be so ignored.

“My apologies, Your Majesty.” With a bow of her head, Gerda stepped backwards again. “We thought that we heard something.”

“I was...” Elsa waved her hand airily, heart pounding in her chest. “Thinking aloud. That is all. Thank you for your concern.”

Murmuring assent, Gerda left again, closing the door behind her. The silence of the room suddenly had a heavier feel to it, and Elsa advanced slowly on Jack, feeling the prickle of magic gathering in her. Perhaps it was the expression on her face that made him get hastily to his feet, staff now held more readily.

“Who _are_ you?” she demanded once again. “And what are you doing here?”

“I just came to see who else could call down the snow like that,” replied Jack, and suddenly his voice was so _earnest_ and it managed to, if not reduce Elsa’s anger, at least stop it from increasing. “I almost thought it might be someone else like me, but-”

“Like you?” Elsa took a step towards him, eyes scanning him again. She had all but ignored the silver-white hair, the frost dusting his shoulders and chest, but now she could see that the flecks of ice on his clothes were not melting away. Something between caution and fear caught at her, though, and she put one hand to her chest self-consciously. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, no,” waving it away, Jack hopped backwards onto the sill again, this time standing in the centre of the frame. “You’re human, I can see that now. But I’m pretty sure that it was you who whipped up that snowstorm a few weeks back, and if that’s the case, you’re still something pretty different.”

He held up one hand, and an ice-crystal shaped like a giant snowflake formed above it, turning slowly around and over on itself. Then, without warning, he flicked it in Elsa’s direction; her hand snapped up as if to catch it, but it came to rest an inch away from her palm instead and remained there, held in place by a tendril of her magic. Elsa lowered her hand again, looking at the ice for a moment, then back up to Jack. She could feel her uncertainty growing, anger at the intrusion giving way to far older thoughts.

“Did you do this?” she said. Her voice cracked, and she took a deep breath to recover it. Jack spun his staff in his hands, sending up a tiny glittering cloud of ice that evaporated as it got more than a few inches away from him. “Did you do this to me?”

“No.” It physically hurt to hear him say the word, but then he crouched down so that they were close to eye-level again. “But I’d be interested in seeing just what you can do.”

“If you’ve heard about the snowstorm, then I think you’ve seen enough.” Elsa had found that letting out her magic in small, careful ways had made it far easier to control than denying it ever had. Olaf’s personal snowfall, the ice that decorated the palace, the dresses that she wore all kept it under control, as if she was siphoning it off. She went to turn away. “Now please, go, if you haven’t anything useful to say to me. I don’t care if you’re Jack Frost or Old Man Winter or Jokul Frosti. Just _go_.”

Out of nowhere, a hand came to rest on her arm. Elsa snatched it away, and sharp points of ice shot up from the floor to separate her from Jack. He took a step back, and Elsa hurriedly backed away, cradling her hands to her chest again.

“Get out.” She tried her hardest to make it an order, but even she could hear that it sounded a little too much like a request. “Before you get yourself hurt.”

“You couldn’t hurt me.” Jack tapped his fingers against his staff. “Not with ice or snow or cold.”

“Why are you _here_?” Part of her – a large part, but shrinking – wanted him to leave, or for her to wake up and discover that this had been the strangest dream that she had ever had. But with every word he said, and every moment that she saw the ice on his clothes and wound into the wood of his staff, she wanted to know who he was.

“That snowstorm,” Jack pointed towards the window, as if it were there still, though Elsa could be sure now that her magic was too controlled to burst out like that again. “Was big. I mean, I’ve caused worse, but not in the middle of the summer. Bunny thought that it was me, of course,” he added offhand, “but I was down south at the time. Boy, was he mad when he found the snow back home.” He seemed to catch himself, realising that Elsa was looking at him in something close to bewilderment. “So I did a bit of asking around, and everyone seemed to agree that it came from around this part of the world. And I just...” he trailed his hand through the air, leaving a faint trail of snow behind it for a moment. “Followed the ice.”

“But I... you... you can do this?” So many questions were fighting for space in her mind that Elsa barely knew which ones to ask first. “The snow, the ice... like me?”

“Eh, not quite. But similar, I think.”

“But if you didn’t cause this then... who did?”

Jack smiled self-deprecatingly. “Well, in my case, the Man in the Moon. With you, I’m not so sure.”

“What?” Surely, this had to be a dream – one about which she would tell Anna, and they would laugh over its strangeness. But on the other hand, Elsa was not sure that her mind could have put together a dream such as this, pleasant compared to the nightmares and memories that she usually endured. “The Man in the Moon? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Come on, I’ll explain.” Jack held out one hand towards her, beckoning with his fingers. Elsa treated him to a particularly doubtful look. “That ice palace has _got_ to be yours, right? Up in the mountains? The Wind knows where it is, it’ll take no time at all.”

Almost wanting to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, Elsa held up her hands and took a step back again. The barrier of ice between them sloughed away, but she shook her head. “No. I am not going into the mountains with a stranger who claims to be Jack Frost, this conversation is over, and I am going to fulfil my role as Queen. I have my duties to attend to. Good day to you, whoever you are. Now please leave, and do not come back.”

There was something about the way he grinned and raised his eyebrows at her which let her know that he would do exactly as he pleased. “I guess Queens don’t get snow days, huh?” Before Elsa could answer, Jack hopped lightly back up onto the window-frame again, dangling one foot over the edge, then half-saluted her. “I’ll see you come moonrise.”

She went to correct him, but he stepped over the sill and disappeared from sight. With her heart in her mouth and a curse on her lips, Elsa ran over to the window, but all that she could see was a distant figure, caught up in the breeze.

“Flying,” she said flatly. Feeling the beginnings of a headache, she put one hand to her forehead, but it really wasn’t making that much of a difference. It wasn’t that sort of pain. Elsa went to close the window, but hesitated at the last moment and left it instead, and told herself that it was her imagination that she heard laughter in the wind.

 

 

 

Elsa returned to her room that evening to find Jack walking back and forth on the top of her bed and drawing feathery frost-patterns on the ceiling. It was only more annoying that the maids with her did not notice him, and while she tried to speak normally to them she was also determined not to turn her back on the young man. Eventually she shooed them away as they started to talk about helping her to get ready to bed, and gave Jack a disapproving look as he laughed to himself.

“That’s not funny,” she said, once the doors were closed.

Jack slung his staff across his shoulders, hands dangling over it. “Come on. I would have turned around.”

Feeling the heat in her cheeks did not even begin to make up for the fact that she was blushing. Elsa folded her arms pointedly. “What are you doing here?”

“I said I’d come back. And I keep my word.” Jack stepped off the bed and landed on the floor as lightly as if there had been no drop at all. He unwound one hand and extended it to Elsa. “So, are you coming?”

“Coming _where_?”

“I said I’d explain.”

“Yes,” said Elsa, arms still folded. “You did. I do not, however, recall anything about going anywhere. Frankly, I don’t even remember agreeing to this.”

“Don’t you want to at least make sure that your maids don’t think that you’re talking to yourself again?”

His tone was... teasing, that was it. Even Anna was careful about teasing Elsa nowadays, preferring to make sure that any jokes she made were about something else, something distant and non-harmful. Elsa was grateful to her for it. But Jack was teasing her, utterly fearlessly, and part of her almost liked it.

She held her head high. “I’m the Queen,” she replied. “I can talk to myself if I so wish. Besides, if you’re the one explaining then you should be the one doing most of the talking.” Jack raised his eyebrows at her, but she held firm and folded her hands in front of her. Calmly, lowered. She was getting better at that. “Well?”

“You know,” said Jack, “I’ve been thinking on this all day, trying to figure how to say it. But at least you know that magic exists, right?” He waited just long enough for her to nod. “Well, that’s a start.

“I’m... I’m Jack Frost. I’m a spirit, not the only one, there are a lot of us.” There was something breathless in his voice, something shining in his eyes. Excitement. “I’ve only been around about three hundred years, which isn’t all that long. If people don’t believe in spirits, they don’t see them, and...” An almost self-deprecating shrug. “Well, I’m new on the scene. Don’t get seen by many people.”

“So you really were going to try to break into my bedroom, invisible.”

He pulled a face. “Please don’t say it like that. I was just going to look in, to... I don’t know, see if there was any sign of magic around here. I mean, I can feel it everywhere, the whole _kingdom_ , but it gets stronger... around you.”

Again, his eyes fixed on her. She could see conflicting emotions fighting for place: hope, happiness, fear. Could he really be three hundred years old? He looked as young as her or Anna, perhaps even younger, but when he spoke about feeling the magic she realised that he, too, lit up with it.

“Jack Frost,” she said again, quietly. He nodded. “Spirit of Winter. And you came here because... I have magic.”

“Will you show me?”

Jack’s eager words made her take a step back, hands rising almost defensively. “No! I mean... no. It’s not a good idea. Not in the castle.”

“Then how about that palace of yours?”

Elsa had not been able to bear the thought of tearing it down, returning it to the snow that it had once been, and so had let it stand on the North Mountain. Sometimes, when the sun was just at the right angle, she thought that she could see it glitter in the far distance. The thought of allowing this stranger to carry her off there was utterly ridiculous, and yet Elsa had to admit that a lot of things in the past year had proved to be that way.

It was late, but at this time in fall the sunset would be another hour or two away yet. “We don’t need to go as far away as the Ice Palace,” she said. “Just outside the city. Besides, the North Mountain is most of a day’s journey by land, and I do not think that it would be appreciated were I to freeze the fjord once again.”

With a wave of her hand, she removed the train of her dress and bought up the hem of the skirt so that it did not skim the floor. As little as she needed a cloak, it would probably be for the best, lest questions be asked about why the Queen was leaving the palace, unaccompanied, at this time of night.

This was ridiculous. Outrageous. And yet... Elsa looked up at Jack again, and just for a moment allowed herself to hope that she was not the only _thing_ in the world like this. Perhaps that she was not even a _thing_ at all.

“Did you just...” Jack gestured in the vague direction of her dress, then peered more closely at her sleeve. “Is that _ice_?”

She may have been able to make the ice as fine and yet as opaque as fabric, but most people realised fairly swiftly that was what she was wearing. Jack extended a hand towards her arm, and she moved it away pointedly. Arm or not, it was inappropriate to attempt to touch the Queen of Arendelle just because you liked the look of her dress.

He looked so fascinated, though, that Elsa could not be angry. With a flick of her fingers, she summoned up a handkerchief-sized square of the icy fabric and let it float gently down into his outstretched hand. Jack caught it and held it up to the moonlight, turning it this way and that. It was as sheer as her sleeves, a pale blue that glittered throughout, and even though it was just a piece of ice Jack held it as carefully as if it were gold leaf.

“I should try this some time,” he said. “How did you learn to do this?”

Elsa shrugged. “It just came naturally. It all does.”

“Well.” Jack flourished the handkerchief. “I thank you for your colours, my lady.” The prim words were so at odds with the rest of him – his enthusiasm, the staff he carried, the bare feet that she now took note of – that Elsa couldn’t help a smile. “I shall treasure them. And in return,” he said, tucking it into his sleeve, “I suggest that we make haste to that palace of yours.”

“The palace? But–”

This time, she was not quick enough to react before Jack reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her over to the window. She tried to tug away, but there must have been more strength to him than there looked, and Jack just looked round in surprise. “What’s wrong?”

“The Ice Palace is a day away.”

“Not as the crow flies,” replied Jack, grinning. He pushed open the window with his staff, and pointed out a faint point of light on the slopes. “That’s it, right?”

“Perhaps, but–”

At which point, he jumped out of the window.

 

 

 

By the time that Elsa realised they were not heading towards the ground and she did not need to be summoning snowdrifts to cushion their fall, they were already part-way across the fjord. She looked from the rushing sky, to the rapidly-receding Palace, and finally turned a glare on Jack.

“Explain to me,” she said crisply, “what exactly you think you are doing.”

“Heading to the Ice Palace,” Jack replied. He was smirking, one hand in Elsa’s and the other clutching his staff. “You wanted to get out of the city, right?”

“This is not funny.” She fought to rein in her anger, and to raise the snow that she could see on the rooves of the city. Though anger was not as difficult as fear to counteract when it came to her magic, it still made things considerably more difficult. It added as well to the whirling thoughts in her head, the knowledge that her magic could easily have spun out of control in that moment of sharp, piercing fear that had taken her back to being a child again. “Land immediately.”

They were over the fjord in just seconds, above the foothills of the mountains on the far side. Jack gave an amused huff and tugged on Elsa’s hand; to her horror, she saw ice coating his skin, reaching up around his hand and wrist to stiffen the fabric of his shirtsleeves.

“Set us _down_ ,” she said, and it came out somewhere between harsh and desperate.

This time, Jack complied, with a more worried expression. They landed on a field of untouched snow; Jack settled lightly on his feet, while Elsa stumbled and almost dropped to one knee. When he reached towards her again, she shied away, wrapping her arms across her chest.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” A queen was not supposed to use such language, but it was impossible to remove words once they were learnt. Elsa looked at Jack in amazement, disbelief, as the wind began to pick up around them. Here, it was safe to let her storm out, at least while she was this angry. Flakes of snow started to fall, and Jack raised one hand to catch some before looking closely at them. “You could have hurt either of us – both of us!”

“I’m perfectly fine at flying,” he retorted, letting his hand fall and dropping the snowflakes. They had not melted on his palm. “I wasn’t going to let you fall. And besides...”

He went to take her hand, and she stepped away again. Frowning, Jack snatched her wrist, and pressed her fingers to his neck.

“Feel that?”

“Feel what?” The first thing that had struck her was that his skin was the same temperature as hers. It did not have that feverish edge that other people always seemed to have.

But Jack smiled – not a smirk this time, but small and not entirely confident. “Exactly. I’m a spirit. I’m already dead.”

The words cut through her like a knife. The snow dropped from the air around them, winds stilling in an instant as Elsa snatched her hand away again. For an instant, Jack looked pained, then assumed an expression of nonchalance as he set about wiping the ice off his left hand and arm.

“There probably are things out there that could kill me,” he said, voice too light for his words, “but I don’t much want to find out what they are. I doubt you’re one of them.”

As he spoke the last words, his voice softened, and he turned his gaze to hers again. Elsa shook her head. She had never felt the cold, but she imagined this crawling horror was much the same sensation, like water was somehow trickling up her back. “You don’t know anything about me,” she said quietly.

“Then show me.” Jack gestured to the snowfield at large. Apart from the faint marks of her own footsteps, it was untouched, smooth white with only a few boulders poking through here and there. At this altitude, even the trees struggled to cling on, and this slope must have been west-facing and too exposed for them. “Come on.”

“This is a bad idea.”

Not just for the fear of her own magic – Jack had dusted the ice off his sleeve as if it was nothing, and if he had no heartbeat then perhaps he was right and she could not even hurt him in that manner. But she was suddenly quite painfully aware that she was alone at the foot of a distant mountain with a dead boy, and it made her stomach clench.

Jack buried the butt of his staff into the ground. “I’ll go first, if you’d rather.”

Her heart was pounding in her chest. Most of her just wanted to go _home_ , possibly even go to Anna’s room just to check that her sister was all right. Some nights, when she wouldn’t sleep, it helped calm her.

“Okay,” said Jack, apparently deciding that her silence was enough of an answer. “Let’s start simple.” He flicked his hand as if throwing something into the air, and a ball of ice coalesced to fall back into his waiting palm. “See?” He threw it into the air and caught it once again. “Your turn.”

She shook her head, and went to turn away, but Jack seemed to leap through the air to appear in front of her again.

“Please, Elsa,” he said.

She rubbed her arms. “You want to see what I can do?”

Strange, how the words came to her. She had not consciously meant to use that phrase, but as soon as it came to her lips it was like being thrown back in time to a night that she had used those words to herself. Elsa frowned for a moment, then gestured for Jack to wait for a moment.

“All right. Just... stay there.”

In one calm breath, she stopped the flurries of snow at the edge of the field and let the air fall still once again. It was crisp and clear beneath the moonlight, and though she could feel the cold against her skin it was pleasant. She walked out to a distance from Jack, rubbing her hands against each other and forming in her mind a picture, a structure she had seen so often from her window.

There was no need to hitch her skirt aside now. She cracked her heel down against the ground, and ice flowed out from the touch. It shone blue-purple, reaching out into a hexagon around her, then with her hands turned upwards she swept with her arms. Pillars grew from the ice, reaching up as easy as a breath, and Elsa realised with a shock that she had _missed_ these larger displays of her power. It felt good, like running or fencing or riding – all long-distant memories now, but she remembered them. Almost fun.

The floor rose up beneath her like a dais, delicate trellis rising between the pillars to waist-height, and with a gesture of her hand she began to draw the ice over into a roof above her. It felt as easy as drawing, like painting but with ice instead of pigment. In less than a minute, the bandstand formed around her, a copy of the one in the town square right down to the tiles of the roof and the twisting of some of the ironwork in the trellis.

“Wow...” said Jack. Elsa turned, realising that she was smiling now and feeling almost giddy from the rush, to see him alighting the steps behind her and walking slowly under the eaves. “This is... yeah, that palace is definitely yours.”

He ran a hand over one of the pillars, the mirror-smooth finish, and Elsa caught herself biting her lip as if she was waiting for a judgement. Instead, Jack turned and grinned.

“That has definitely raised the bar for the spirit of winter.”

He vaulted out through one of the sides, and, curiosity building, Elsa followed down the steps. A few paces away, Jack turned to face her, holding up one hand with his thumb extended and turning it back and forth like an artist examining his canvas. She did not even have time to ask what he was planning before he spun his staff in his hands and pointed it towards the ground.

Ice flowed from it. Elsa’s heart jumped into her throat; it was like watching the ice come from her own hands, smooth and effortless. Jack hopped onto the patch of ice and slid along it, still painting on the ground with his staff, laughing as he spun and twisted. The powdery snow of the ground was replaced with sweeps of ice that glistened beneath the moon, catching its light at angles and turning it all different night-soft hues.

She couldn’t see what shape it made, but the ice flowed into and over each other in sweeping curves, and with a final spin Jack came to a stop right in front of her. He held out his hand.

“Come on. You’ll see it better from the sky.”

Elsa gave him a look if disbelief. “You want to fly off with me again?”

“I’m giving you warning this time,” said Jack. His tone was playful, eyes bright, and try as she might it was difficult to be angry with him. He gestured her closer. “Just high enough to see this. I’ll behave myself.”

It was so utterly unreal. Not even credible. Taking a deep breath, Elsa took hold of Jack’s hand again, and this time she felt the gentle pressure as the wind lifted them up into the air. Jack controlled their ascent and did not comment about the way that her hand tightened around his, until they were floating above the field as easily as if they were standing.

“How do you do this?” said Elsa. Somehow her voice did not crack.

“The Wind knows me,” Jack replied. “And accepts anyone I’ve got with me.”

“Is the wind... a spirit as well?”

“I’m not too sure. If she is, I’ve never seen her. She just... doesn’t let me fall.”

Something about the way he spoke made the touch of his hand in hers feel more comfortable. Perhaps it was that he referred to the Wind as female, perhaps just the respectful way that he spoke. Then he quirked a smile again.

“Look down.”

She had all but forgotten whatever he had been doing with the ice. Elsa looked towards the ground, feeling a momentary wave of vertigo but finding that it passed surprisingly quickly. The ice that Jack had created made a pattern in the snow, the moonlight all caught at different angles to make tones and suggestions of colour in the blue-white. She blinked, and then the image appeared: it was _her_ , head and shoulders. Her face was turned slightly upwards, looking towards her upraised hand and the sparkle of magic held in it. Her eyes were looking into the distance, lips parted and smiling slightly. She looked... happy. Even excited.

It was too much. Elsa gave a nervous laugh, and felt hands grow damp with sweat that turned to tiny flakes of frost. “I don’t look like that,” she blurted. The woman drawn on the snow looked powerful and confident, all of the things which Elsa wished that she was for the sake of her kingdom as much as for herself.

“You did when you made that bandstand,” said Jack. “I’ve met winter spirits that don’t have magic that powerful. Some of them _need_ the snow, rather than creating it. And you... you made that palace, didn’t you?”

She knew which one; it seemed to have captivated him. “Yes.”

“How long did it take?”

_A breath_ , she almost replied, but caught herself as much for how overly poetic that sounded as for how realistic it was. “Not long,” said Elsa aloud. “I wasn’t keeping track, but... half an hour? Less? Perhaps much less. It was during the Cold Summer.”

The break in her mind had seemed to break the world in two: into _before_ and _after_. Building the Palace, that night exploring her magic in general, had seemed like an instant and a lifetime.

Jack whistled, raising his eyebrows, and they began to slowly descend once again. This time, they set down on the smooth surface of the ice, and Elsa did not stumble. “That’s... wow. I thought you were going to say it happened before the blizzard, or after it. Not during.”

The only gauge Elsa had ever had for her powers was herself. Now she found herself looking curiously at Jack in return. “How much can you do? Is this...” she waved at the ground beneath her feet.

Laughing, Jack shook his head. “This is small stuff. To be honest, that’s usually what I do. Put the frost on trees, on windows, start snowstorms here and there so kids can get some snowfall. _Some_ people,” he added, with a wicked glint in his eye, “get to take the day off work when it’s snowing.”

“If we did that in Arendelle, we’d hardly get anything done,” said Elsa. It came out evenly enough to surprise her, considering the fact that the panic of the summer was still fresh in her mind. But there was a difference between a normal snowfall and what had happened then.

He looked around them. “You have a point. There is a limit to what I can do, way up...” he gestured over his head with one hand. “But I only reached it once. I normally don’t need to. It would be... blizzard. Major blizzard.”

“I’m not sure if I have a limit,” Elsa said. Something about saying it gave her a thrill, and a stab of fear, and a rush of relief. She had set out once to find her limits, and had ended up with a palace and a talking snowman and a kingdom frozen over. And it had all been so _easy_ , like letting out a breath that she had been holding in for far too long. “I tried, once, but... the limits were in my mind. As soon as I pushed, there was more.”

“Can we go to Ice Palace now?” he extended his hand towards her, and she was struck with the ludicrous feeling that he was asking permission.

“You don’t need me to get there.”

“I’m not going to break in,” Jack replied, as if he was faintly offended by the concept. It was so incongruous compared to how he had appeared in the window of her room, and she wondered if it was the fact that it was made of ice which stilled his hand. Then she remembered the look of shock on his face in the moment that she had thrown her ice towards him, and laughter bubbled up out of her.

It started off as just a giggle, and she raised her hand to cover her mouth and try to hold it back. Instead, she snorted. That was the last straw, and Elsa started laughing freely, wrapping one arm across her waist and pressing the other one to her lips. Jack dropped his hand away, looking at her as if he was not sure whether or not she had gone mad, then he relented with a chuckle and shook his head.

“What?” he said finally.

Elsa regained control of herself and spoke more calmly. “It’s abandoned. I never thought of going back there. I’m...” her mirth faded, and she sighed and turned away. “I’m not sure that it’s a good idea.”

“All right then,” said Jack. From the corner of her eye, she saw him shrug. “Hey, I said that I wanted to see your powers, and you did that. Thank you.”

The earnestness had return, and Elsa looked at Jack uncertainly.

“And for the handkerchief,” he added. She smiled again, and as he extended his hand a second time he nodded back towards the city. “I should probably get you back before the servants wonder what that scream was and come looking for you.”

“I did not scream.”

“Sure you didn’t.” When she hesitated, he slipped his hand back into hers again, but Elsa swallowed back the momentary fear and ice did not trail up his arm again. “Come on. I don’t want to be accused of kidnapping the Queen of Arendelle.”

Once again, the wind lifted them up so gently that Elsa barely felt it. Her skirt clung to her legs, and she let herself feel the air moving past as they were carried back over the fjord once again. She had always known, academically, that Arendelle was a beautiful country, but the view from the North Mountain had always been distorted by the snow still falling, and she had never seen it from the air.

A gust of air buffeted them, and she grabbed Jack’s arm with her other hand, but he simply grinned and controlled their descent back down to her window. She stepped down onto the sill as easily as getting out of a carriage.

“This is the strangest dream that I’ve ever had,” said Elsa quietly.

“I,” Jack went to tap her nose with his finger, but she pulled away before he could manage it, “am no dream. Fine.” He raised his hand and blew gently into it, his breath becoming a mist which coalesced into a shining shape. A reindeer, complete with antlers and shaggy coat, perfectly formed in ice. “When you see this in the morning, you’ll believe me.”

She let him press it into her hands. There was something softly magical about it, as distinctive to her as the sense of cool or hard or dry. It stood neatly on one palm, giving her a faintly aloof expression which did not look anything at all like Sven. “All right,” she said. “I will.”

Without looking back, he sprang up onto the windowsill, the wind just plucking at his cloak and the cuffs of his shirt. Elsa wrapped her hands around the reindeer and watched him, framed against the deepening dark of the sky.

“And Jack?” she called, just before he could spring away. He looked up, cocky smile fading for a moment. “Thank you.”

He gave a playful salute with his staff. “Next time, don’t throw ice at me.”

“There’s going to be a next time?”

In the fairy tales, spirits only turned up once, before vanishing off into the night forevermore and leaving the hero or heroine to the rest of their story. For all that Elsa knew she was not the fairy tales kind, it was difficult with no other frame of reference. She simply did not know what to expect from Jack.

He laughed, teeth sparkling white. “You think I’m going to leave the one person who could give me a fair snowball fight? Pssht. I’ll be back when I can find the time. Leave a window open.”

The mere suggestion was so improper that Elsa almost fumbled the reindeer, just about managing to catch it without layering more ice over what was already there. She felt her cheeks grow warm, though she wasn’t sure whether it would show or not. “No... peeping!” she spluttered.

“I can’t walk in the front doors!” Jack was still swinging from the windowframe, which meant that he had to be lighter than he looked or using some sort of magic to not pull it over. He gestured in the vague direction of the front gates. “Besides, I’d get lost. Can’t imagine anyone giving an invisible person directions to the Queen’s bedchambers.”

She had to admit, that was a ridiculous mental image. “All right. I’ll have one left open.”

Jack winked, stepped back into the empty air, and was whipped away by the wind once again. Elsa watched him go, his staff a faint twinkling light for a while until the night swallowed him up, then crossed to the window and pushed it almost, but not completely, closed.

She did not know what to think, her head whirling. Should she talk to Anna? _Could_ she even talk to Anna about this? She wished now that she had thought to ask Jack whether it was allowed to speak to others, even if Anna was the only person who was likely to believe her without thinking that she was completely mad. Arendelle might acknowledge magic nowadays, but it was still not all that good at stomaching it. An invisible frost-spirit running – or flying – around would probably not be too popular an idea.

Elsa looked down at the little ice reindeer once again. It was powerfully built, with broad antlers, and Jack had somehow captured in the ice the movement of it tossing its head back. It was beautiful and delicate, and he had created it with just a puff of his breath. She found herself wondering whether she could do the same.

_Jack Frost_. It seemed so ridiculous. Jokul Frosti was an old story, from south of here, though Arendelle had heard it from traders and seamen. Elsa had never really thought of herself as one for belief; magic was patently real, the proof of it living in her hands, but when even her own parents feared her and encouraged the palace to shut around her, it did not seem possible to think that anything good could come of it.

Perhaps she had kept back a little more belief than she thought. A smile crept across her face, and she set the reindeer on the table beside her bed. It was getting late, and she felt exhilarated enough that she would probably struggle to sleep even as it was. Better not to deliberately stay up mulling on things when she did not really have the time for them.

She did, however, change into her nightgown behind the screen. Just in case there were other, less talkative, invisible spirits around.


End file.
